Challenging the Narrative with David Charalambous, Part 1

Each week, the WCH Mind Health Committee hosts engaging conversations on Telegram. On April 13, David Charalambous hosted a conversation about challenging the prevailing narrative. He was joined by Mind Health Committee Members Dr. Jennifer Hibberd, Kim Knight, and Anne O’Reilly.

David helped us better understand why people become emotional when their ideas are challenged and practical ways we can have successful conversations with people about topics that often cause tension and division.

David is the founder of Reaching People. His background involves 25 years of consulting to multinational clients and one on one with individuals from all walks of life. These include mums and dads through to athletes, high performers, and business leaders.

Tune in to Part 2 on April 20 in the WCH discussion group on Telegram.

 [00:00:00] Emma Sron: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Connection Room. I see our host for today, David, is here and getting ready and he’ll probably get started in a few minutes after we give time for everybody to join us. If there’s anybody that you wanted to invite to join us here today, please take a moment to share this link and invite your friends to join us here in the Connection Room today.

[00:00:31] Hi Ann. Hi Kim.

[00:00:32] Jennifer, you’re muted. 

[00:00:35] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: That’s better. Right? Thank you so much. Hi ladies, good to see you here. We’re just wait for David to join us because we have a wonderful talk that’s going to be going on today and interactive and I have you both here as experts to contribute to. 

[00:00:54] David, welcome, thank you for joining us in the Connection Room.

[00:00:57] Thank you. May I introduce David, who is a committee member on our Mind Health Committee, and here today to talk on our wonderful topic. Let me give you a little background on David. He’s a founder of Reaching People. His background involves 25 years consulting to multinational clients, and one-on-one with individuals from all walks of life.

[00:01:21] These include moms and dads through to athletes, high performers, and business leaders. David has been fortunate to work with notable people. One interesting project related to sustainable communities and included Bruce Linton and Graham Slate, sustainable farming expert. 

[00:01:38] David’s skills include NLP, EFT, general semantics, system theory, process mapping, dynamics, and communication. He has built a unique model of communication, bringing together the models from numerous fields to form a unique and simple way of explaining symptoms. So David, you come with a wealth of information and I would like to give you the floor to speak with everybody.

[00:02:05] David Charalambous: Thank you, Jennifer. It’s good to be here. This is a very important topic. One that so many of us are interested in and if I give you a little bit of a background on the project will- things will begin to make sense. So if I turn back to March 2020, I found myself in a very interesting experience that I consider myself very good at debating, very good at having conversations.

[00:02:32] And then I was startled to see so many people being very resistant to even asking questions. This was really starting. I don’t tend to, I haven’t watched mainstream media for years, so I really only followed from talking to experts that I know, and I really wasn’t concerned with a number of things.

[00:02:50] This really got me asking the question, why are people reacting the way they did? So this took me down a real deep learning curve even further than before to really understand the behavioral sciences that have been used and how people were really making sense of what was going on. And what we did was we’ve analyzed conversations from every angle and we’ve, you know, we’ve looked at all the research, we’ve spoke to many, many experts, and we’ve looked to bring the knowledge, to understand how to communicate with people that hold different views.

[00:03:21] This is really the main point. So the three main hubs of the project is really the first one is how to have better conversations. And that’s what we’re going to look at tonight. The second pillar is how to message well. So that’s flyers, social media, emails, and letters, et cetera. It’s very, very key. And the third one is how we’re influenced. And we won’t really, the second and third we may touch on, but really how we’re influenced is very key because behavioral sciences, which effectively is the science of understanding how we make decisions.

[00:03:49] There’s so much research now that they’ve made startling discoveries about how we make decisions, why are we act the ways we do. And then that science effectively, rather than being shared with the public, has been used by corporations and governments to use what’s called a nudge, which is to nudge us down one decision rather than another.

[00:04:08] And it’s been obviously very effective because we just look at what’s happened in the last two years. So what I want to ask you first is, really around conversations, is to imagine that we’re going to have a look at a new point of view. You know, many of us- certainly it has been my experience and I have a lot of experience of it.

[00:04:25] The, initially, conversations were very strained and very difficult. And it’s only when we really begin to understand what’s going on, that they got a bit easier. So I’d say that most conversations around challenging any of the narratives are not successful at the moment. And that’s certainly been my experience talking to people.

[00:04:44] The learning to communicate really well with people of different views is very challenging. It’s not new because it was actually Max Plank, who was a famous quantum physicist, who said science moves on one funeral at a time. And that what it means is that when we have established ideas, they’re very difficult to challenge. 

[00:05:02] Effectively, having an idea, you know- human mind is very similar to the egg and in fact once the egg’s got a, you know, it’s sperm, it shuts off to anything else. And the human mind tends to be like that. When we understand an idea, we tend to shut down. 

[00:05:16] Learning to have conversations with someone that’s having different views to us is difficult.

[00:05:24] And there’s no way to get around that. If they’re family, even more. But learning the skills to have a really conversation, good conversation. I would say 15 to 20 hours, you know, is a lot that would be, you know, a real deep dive into it. But within a couple of hours, I think that you could really significantly improve your conversations with difficult people.

[00:05:45] It’s certainly been our experience. We’ve had a lot of feedback where people say, oh yeah, we really starting to see things. One of the things to bear in mind is that learning these skills is a bit like learning to drive. You know, before you ever got into a car, you really didn’t know that- all the things it took to learn to drive well. And that’s what we’re going to do tonight.

[00:06:03] We’re going to literally look at a little bit of theory. It takes time and practice to really get good at having conversations with those who have different views. And if I was to describe what it’s like, it’s like navigating an obstacle course, but with a blindfold on. And that’s very difficult. So what we want to do tonight is we’re going to remove that blindfold.

[00:06:28] We’re going to start to see some of the obstacles. Once you see them, you’ll go, oh, that makes sense. And this has been one of our experiences that when people start to see why conversations are going badly, it’s a bit of a relief because it often feels like we’re going mad if someone’s just reacting in a very stubborn way.

[00:06:50] Another thing to point out is that awareness is really key. So once we do become aware of things, you know, you generally can’t become unaware of them. So awareness is very, very key. So all that- what we’ve got tonight is we’ve got a long list of tips and the tips are really the tip of the iceberg. So they’re the things that I would say, okay, if you do this, you know, the things to do and the things not to do. Each tip really is a tip of an iceberg.

[00:07:14] And there’ll be a lot of information under the surface, which will be useful to know, but for tonight’s purpose we’re really just going to look at the, you know, the best bang for our buck, if that makes sense. 

[00:07:26] So there’s three aspects really, to all conversations. And what I want to do now is we’re going to have a conversation really with our panel members. And what I’m going to do is really talk about those three aspects. And then under each aspect, we’re going to have certain tips. 

[00:07:43] Now, first of all, I need to explain what those aspects are. The first one is context. Context is king. Okay? And I’m gonna explain in a minute what is context, but it’s really things like if I was to share a study- so they did one study on the media and what they did was they designed a number of headlines. What they did was they circulated these headlines through different magazines. And then what they did, they polled a number of people on how believable this headline was. And what happened was that depending on where the headline appeared, the believability factor changed significantly.

[00:08:23] So they gave a seven point scale, one being totally believable, seven being unbelievable- is that when it was in a very considered respectable magazine, the believability was on average 1.9. But when that same headline was in a different magazine with not a lot of respect, the believability went down to about six, which is pretty incredible.

[00:08:45] So what you find is the context in which a piece of information appears is critical to how believable it is. This obviously explains why at the old media, the mainstream media, really has a sort of, you know, almost a monopoly on believable things for people. That makes sense? So really these are things to understand.

[00:09:05] Another context thing would be that if someone calls you say, you know, an anti-vaxxer or anything like that, they consider themselves a pro-vaxxer. So whenever people are in, in Britain, we have this Brexit- so whenever you have two people that are defined in different groups, what is going to happen is that they’re going to ignore all information from the other group. This is really key to understand. 

[00:09:31] They did another study where they asked during the 2015 election, they said to people, they put up this pretend policy. They say, we want to add one P to VAT, and we’re going to have 10,000 extra nurses. They polled conservative people. And if the people were conservative, they backed it four times as much as they backed it if it was from Labour. And in fact the exact opposite happened as well.

[00:09:58] So if they just polled Labour supporters and they said, this is a labor policy, four times as much support happen as to when they said it was conservative. Does that make sense? 

[00:10:09] So I’m just going to open it up, so it’s context, you know, is there a base understanding of Jennifer, Kim, and Anne on what context is. 

[00:10:17] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: Yes, it’s pretty clear. And it’s really- first of all, what your belief system is, and then it’s all to do with positivity and negativity. And you mentioned another one when we were speaking before we have come together here, about how you positively introduced- you were talking about a surgery, and why don’t you give that as an example? Cause that brings more highlights if people want to understand the difference between a positive association and a negative association. 

[00:10:46] David Charalambous: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. This is why context is so important. And one of the things about context is invisible. You really don’t see it within a conversation. It’s under the surface. But when you’re aware of it, you can’t unsee it.

[00:10:58] So when I’m ever in a conversation- and so first of all, just to finish that- so they’ve done a study and what they found was the after six months of a surgery, 90% of the people survived, which meant that 10% of people passed away. They then advise these numbers to doctors. But what they did, they advise the numbers differently.

[00:11:18] So half the doctors were told 90% of people survive and a different set of doctors were told that 10% of people didn’t survive. When they talk to doctors, the 90%, 84% of those doctors recommended the surgery. But when they use the 10%, only 50% of people recommended that. Now that sounds of crazy because it’s the same numbers.

[00:11:43] But what you’ll find is the context, the way your information is framed, the where it appears, who it appears from, all these things are so key to the conversation that we really want to understand them. And we’ll touch on them tonight. We’ve touched on some of the important ones, but we go in, we’ve produced a series of videos explaining this in depth.

[00:12:03] Does that make sense? So one of the ones that’s really key, is when I- so I’ll give you an example, a story. So I was at, I was accompanying some lawyers. They were serving some notices somewhere. Now what happened was that a gentleman came up to me and, there was a group of us, and he started, you know, saying you’re spreading misinformation, you guys are conspiracy theorists, et cetera, et cetera. 

[00:12:26] And I said to him, okay, let’s have a, and he had the same name as me, so I said look David, I’ll be very polite to you and I know you’ll do the same to me. Let’s chat about this, but let me first say, we’re on the same side. And he was like what do you mean? I said, well, you’re here because you care about your family and your community. That’s why I’m here. We just may have a difference of ideas. 

[00:12:49] Now, when I said that his whole body language changed and his whole demeanor changed, because what happens is that people orientate themselves to the caricature of who they think, what group they think you’re a part of. Does that make sense? Which is why there’s so much propaganda on really advising the public which group are good and which group of bad. Does that make sense?

[00:13:14] So one of the real important things is to connect human to human, not from, you know, perspective or position to position. Does that make sense? 

[00:13:26] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: Absolutely. It’s find a common ground, have a discussion in that, in that common ground. It’s a little bit like step into other people’s shoes. Try to think it from their perspective, but to come into a common area that you are agreeable on and then walk them from there gently. Am I on the right track with that? 

[00:13:44] David Charalambous: Yeah, that’s it, because just to touch on what I want to do tonight is obviously keep it really the important and the things that we can adopt straight away. But biologically speaking, this really key aspects too. If a group of people, whatever they are, the media successfully advises the public that that group is amoral. What happens is that we code in our brain, that group is amoral. That part of the brain is actually the same part of the brain responsible for discussed because morality only developed 30 to 15,000 years ago. So what happens is, this is why people get such a visceral response. Does that make sense? 

[00:14:25] Because in fact, the part of the brain is saying to them, look, this is disgusting to me because that person’s amoral. So that’s why breaking that caricature is probably one of the most important things to do. Because all the empirical studies show, if the group, if people identify by the groups, they will dismiss all information from the other person. Does that make sense? 

[00:14:49] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: Absolutely. Kim and Anne, would you like to add anything to this. 

[00:14:54] Kim Knight: No, no, I’m soaking it in

[00:14:57] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: Anne, go ahead please. 

[00:14:59] Anne O’Reilly: Yeah, no, no. I feel, I feel it’s linking, you know, I just feel, yes, this is linked into understand some of the situations that same well- and in a way, the problem is when you don’t understand, you’re put off and you feel like there’s a block and that you can’t go any further.

[00:15:17] I think the whole point of understanding it means that you’re going to persist and then kind of come in from another angle because you see there’s more to it than just, you know, and the conversation. So, yeah, thanks David. 

[00:15:32] Kim Knight: My question is how do we help people who, you know, initially seem to be in a different opinion, on the other side, so to speak, how do we help people see or open up and be more open-minded to be at least willing, to be open, to see a different opinion?

[00:15:50] David Charalambous: So this, a lot of the time, it won’t be a conscious decision. So I’m going to share another story. So what we’re still talking about context, and it’s, the most important thing is context dynamics. And it’s been my experience that if you, so the first one is context, the second one is our state of mind as we’re having the conversation. The third thing is how and what we share and what we speak about. Ok? 

[00:16:13] Mathematics would be, the facts would be the most important thing. But in conversations, it’s actually the least important thing of the three. Okay. If you don’t get the first two correct, it doesn’t matter how solid your information is, it doesn’t matter how much you have of it. And I think that’s been so many people’s experience. 

[00:16:32] So to share what the question that Kim does asked, so one of the doctors I’ve known for two years had literally been, you know, telling people fact, fact, fact, you know, getting quite frustrated that people wouldn’t [inaudible]. We had a few conversations. I explained to him why this was the case. And then he told me a beautiful story when I spoke to him next. He said, he said, incredible, for two years, I’ve been, you know, just doing what I thought was right. And now I can see. 

[00:16:58] So he went to a retreat and there was 75 people there. I think it was only him and his wife that didn’t wear a mask. And then he went to sit down at a table and he said to the lady sitting there, he said, do you mind if I join you? And she definitely not, you’re not wearing a mask, get out of here. She was really angry about him. And the usual response to that anger would be to get quite agitated yourself, because if someone’s being quite abusive and rude, it’s not very nice. 

[00:17:23] But he remembered what we said. Don’t step in the ring. Yes, sir. So he said, okay, you know, it’s unfortunate that you feel that. Do you mind explaining why? And then, you know, he just, he just listened and he listened. And he said it was incredible. She just sort of then asked him to sit down. And then 20 minutes later, she’s slapping his shoulder and laughing, joking with him.

[00:17:43] She didn’t consciously decide to do that. The fact that he was very open to listen, the fact that he connected with her. There was something more than what’s going on in the conscious mind. And then she’s effectively changed her view of him. Hasn’t she? Yeah. And then she’s like, and then she went, oh, he’s a doctor, so, you know, maybe he knows more than I know. You know, it was very interesting. 

[00:18:05] One of the things is it’s not, I can’t say conclusion, it’s not really very productive to try and rationally talk someone into something. Okay. That, from my experience, does not work. And when we go into the tips later on, that will begin to make sense.

[00:18:24] Kim Knight: Yeah. Well, what I get from that, David, is, you know, it’s about being heard. When people are heard and listened to and validated something changes within them without anybody else having to do anything. 

[00:18:40] David Charalambous: That is a really good point. Think about from our perspective, if we tell someone something or we share a piece of information and they completely deny experience, how does that feel? It feels completely terrible.

[00:18:53] So think about when a conversation occurs. When a conversation occurs, you’ve got two people that meet. Each person, if they have difference of opinion, are absolutely convinced that their opinion is correct. Okay. Now, if we don’t honor the other person’s experience, we will get the same response in the way we feel when they don’t honor ours.

[00:19:12] We don’t have to agree with it. So for instance, if someone’s really scared of something they shouldn’t be scared of, we don’t just say, oh, that’s nonsense, don’t be scared. We, we understand that they’ve experienced some fear. It might not be justified. It might be, who knows. But to acknowledge that’s what they’ve experienced. And that’s where you summed it really well, Kim.

[00:19:30] It’s about being heard. It’s about being- there’s really the dignity aspect of this is to, you know, respect the dignity of the other person and not return the dignity violation if they abuse us or have a go at us. Which is, which brings me on to one point, actually that’s really worth mentioning.

[00:19:47] Really getting through to people is not fair. And what I mean by that is that we, if we’re in a conversation and the other person’s convinced they’re right, we think we’re right, it’s been my experience that around the certain narratives we have at the moment, COVID et cetera, the other person is not going to go out of their way to try and make the conversation more successful.

[00:20:10] They might say. But yet we want to. Does that make sense? So we’re going to take a step back and we say, okay, why is this conversation not successful? Why does the person not listen to me? Why can I not get information shared? We’re going to do that tonight. That makes sense. And that’s not really fair is it because it’s kind of fun.

[00:20:28] It also, things have a lot more control over what’s going on. And I asked everyone the question, would you trade places with someone on the other side of the narrative? Let’s assume that there’s two sides, there’s much more than that. Does that make sense? 

[00:20:42] Kim Knight: I’m wondering if you can do an example role-play because that makes it really practical and tangible for people to then go out and try it out.

[00:20:52] David Charalambous: -make some scripts and we are mak– we’re in the process, we did actually record a lot of videos on this, but they got lost in the ether, which is very unfortunate. So we’re just about record them again. But I’m happy to have a conversation. Maybe if I go through the next few things and a couple of tips, and then we can provide some examples.

[00:21:10] And obviously there’s lots of stories on how we’ve spoken to people. So to give you an example on what we just touched on. So something happened ,many times I’ve had so many conversations online where someone will make a comment, I will make a comment on their post. And then they’re saying, oh, get rid of your conspiracy BS, blah, blah, blah.

[00:21:32] Now what usually happens is that that will make us quite agitated and then we will throw something back. If we don’t step in the ring- so in this instance, all I said was, can you please advise what was conspiratorial about what I posted? It’s data, you know, the CDC. Okay. So the thing is not to- because what you’ll find is there’s so much emotion in this, so they’re posting very emotionally.

[00:22:00] So I just didn’t- didn’t step into the ring. Posted that. And then there was a break for like an hour and then they posted, oh, I apologize, I didn’t mean to be rude, I’ll take a look. Whereas if I were to have fired back, you would have had this shooting at each other for a long while. Because what I find is if you, if you don’t fire back, people don’t know what to do with the energy.

[00:22:21] And then they suddenly realize what they said was probably not, you know, very nice. But if you try to point it out, then you won’t get the same thing. That makes sense? Because they will want to defend themselves. So, so context is king. Context is the first thing to get correct. 

[00:22:39] The second thing is our state. So I can imagine, and this was certainly my experience at the beginning until I did a lot work on it, there’s a lot of emotion and there’s a lot of charge when we’re having these conversations. What’s really key, that if we get very emotional, do you know one of the first things that happens, our rational mind shuts down.

[00:23:02] If I had a pound for every time someone said to me, I know what I want to say, but I get agitated and I can’t remember anything. That is what the brain’s doing. That’s just a natural response. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve just gone into the emotional part of the brain. The rational mind shuts down, and then I’m sure everyone here on the panel knows the fight or flight and what happens.

[00:23:24] So it’s really important not to trigger the fight or flight in ourselves or in the other person. If the other person triggers, there’s a good chance that we get pulled into it. If we don’t get pulled into it, we pull them out quite quickly. It’s very hard to be agitated with someone that’s very calm. It needs, it’s need to dance.

[00:23:44] Does that make sense?

[00:23:45] So on the second one, I think the second one’s really sort of self-evident. There’s a lot of work to do on it, but it’s really about remaining calm because people really respond to someone that’s calm seems knowledgeable, you know, they don’t respond to someone- so imagine, is everyone- if I say the Evangelical approach, would everyone associate with what they would understand what that?

[00:24:09] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: I think so. I do think so. 

[00:24:12] David Charalambous: So if I said, Jennifer, Jennifer, you’ve got to look at this, you’ve got to read this article, I’m going to send you five links, you need to read them. Can I, can you find me back later? This really, this is what I was like two years ago because it just seemed to be so important, but you soon realize that this actually is very counterproductive because there’s too much passion. 

[00:24:32] There’s too much emotion. And what happens is, you know, there was a gentleman on the street corner, in my local town, you know, with religious texts and he was screaming at people and he was being very– he had no audience, no one was stopping. Yeah. But you’ll see people– so this, this state of mind, this state that we get in, and I’m not saying it’s easy, boy, it’s not, it’s difficult.

[00:24:53] But once you culturally manage it and you speak from a very calm, knowledgeable position, people respond significantly better. So they’re the first two things and they’re the things. So then we get onto how I share information and what I share. 

[00:25:09] Kim Knight: Can I just add something, David? 

[00:25:11] David Charalambous: Yes. 

[00:25:13] Kim Knight: Just before you move on to number three. Because getting defensive is basically anger. It’s the emotion of anger, which is a protective mechanism that we all have to protect ourselves emotionally. And you know, underneath that are usually other emotions, you know, sometimes hurt, sometimes fear. You know, in this type of context of what we’re talking about, it will often be fear, right? Because we’re, we’re trying to protect ourselves. 

[00:25:38] And one of the, the easiest things that we can start to practice is to, you know, to stop this anger, which is something that I’ve had to work on a lot, is to keep our heart open. So what’s really interesting is that if we start to become quite aware of what happens inside of us at a felt sense level when we get angry, we’re going to start noticing that there’s a tension.

[00:26:04] Literally tense up and anger is very connected with the liver. And so there’ll be a tension and a contraction in the liver area, which will actually also affect the heart and the pericardium on an energetic level, but even on a biological level. And when we do that, we closed down, we contract, we tense, and we closed down energetically.

[00:26:25] And that’s when we, we closed down to hearing what other people might be saying. And we also create a disconnection between, between the other person. So what I started to do a couple of years ago, and this is connected with what is called cultivating the five essential qualities of the heart, and the first quality is trust and the second one is openness, is that when I was triggered into anger, cause we, we get triggered, right? And that anger is generated inside. I consciously started to keep my heart energenetically open. And that started to really radically change my anger response, and it started to reduce it. And so when we’re in a situation with somebody, and by the way, you know, I’m talking to myself as, you know, as I say this to, you know, to, to, to everybody here on the call is if we’re in a, in a conversation with someone where we feel that defensiveness coming on, if we can consciously just keep energetically, keep our heart open, that it really can create miracles.

[00:27:34] And it’s, you just have to try it and see what it, you know, see what happens. 

[00:27:39] David Charalambous: Yeah. That’s a really good point. Actually, that takes us on to one of the, for me, one of the most touching stories I’ve had on this project, and this goes back to the first lockdown. There’s– we have a number of psychologists in our group.

[00:27:54] There’s 600 people now on our list and we’ve got many psychologists, many, you know, scientists. And this lady, Rachel, she’s not only a psychologist, but she works with a local council. So she went to her local park to see if anyone was in need of assistance. And there’s three or four of them went. Now there was an elderly lady sitting on the bench and the elderly lady was shouting out over them, you know, super spreaders, what you’re doing is terrible, et cetera. 

[00:28:22] You have in the UK, we had certain restrictions, but what Rachel was doing was totally within the law, but this elderly lady didn’t see it that way. Now, Rachel is quite fiery lady. She’s quite passionate lady. And she could feel the anger, the energy sort of rising in her.

[00:28:38] And then she remembered something we had a discussion about, which was, you mustn’t step in the ring. I know it’s challenging, but if you step in the ring the conversation is over. And she remembered that and she just managed to keep the anger down. Then the elderly lady approached her and she was like, muttering things to her.

[00:28:53] And then Rachel turns around, puts her hand on the heart and says, how can I help you, my dear? And the elderly lady was taken aback and she said, well, what you’re doing is wrong. And then Rachel explained, no, I’m actually a trained psychologists. We work for the local council. I’m here within the laws. What the restrictions are doing to you is really horrible. Would you like to talk about it? 

[00:29:15] And the lady says, no, you know, I don’t want to get emotional. And then Rachel said, it’s okay I’m here to listen. And the elderly lady looks up and says, I just need a hug. And it was really very profound to me because all the anger that was being displayed externally was because the media was explaining to people they’re not getting their hugs, they’re not getting what they need because of people breaking the rules. So all that anger was directed at other people. That may sense? So a lot of the time when people are getting angry at you, it’s because, you know, they’d been told those questioning it have causing the problem.

[00:29:50] That was really a powerful story because then, because Rachel listened, she connected with her there. They spoke for 30 minutes. At that point, there’s now a connection. And of course there’s then information exchanging. If Rachel had, you know, responded, yeah, probably justifiably when someone’s abusing you without listening, then it wouldn’t have gone over 30 minutes, would it?

[00:30:15] Kim Knight: It’s about really understanding what’s really going on and the other person for them to be responding that way. And it will always come down to something emotional for that and helping to validate that. 

[00:30:30] David Charalambous: And we don’t know, literally, there are people out there that are egotistical, there’s people with willful ignorance. There’s all these. Which we don’t know what it is. With the lady, you know, halfway through that story most people are thinking that lady’s interfering, she’s annoying, et cetera. And then at the end of it, they have a lot of empathy. Because you see it from a different perspective, which is also one of the reasons why stories are so powerful.

[00:30:54] So the state of mind is the second most important thing. Then the third thing is how we share information and what we say. And then what I have is I have a whole list, a list of, of tips. But does the three pillars make sense to everyone on the panel and really, if there are any– is it worth asking the audience if there’s any questions on three aspects, because then we can go into some specifics, we’ve we’ve already talked through a few of them though.

[00:31:20] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: I think you have a good point. Emma, are there any questions? So Devin, any questions that you were picking up from our viewers here? 

[00:31:28] Emma Sron: No questions yet. There’s been, as always, some good feedback, but if anybody does have questions and you type it into the chat, we can, we can ask those. 

[00:31:38] David Charalambous: Okay. So we’ve talked about dynamics, sorry context. And within context, the most important tip is the dynamic of the conversation. Okay. Now there’s four dynamics and I’ll just touch on them now, what we’ve, we’ve got a 30 minute presentation on the reachingpeople.net website on dynamics. 

[00:31:57] There’s four dynamics that you’ll ever be in in a conversation. One of them is known as supplicative. Now we’re not going to spend much time on it, but a lot of the population, it’s really, it’s the dynamic that a parent would be in with a child in the first six years of life.

[00:32:12] And that the child would just listen to everything and do is they’d told. That’s a supplicative dynamic. That’s the dynamic that a lot of people are in with the authorities. Yeah. So whatever they say, they just do. They don’t question. It’s just what, that’s what we do. And it’s a lot of it’s unconscious. They’re not conscious of that.

[00:32:27] The second dynamic has combative and that’s when someone pulls you down so they look better. Okay. We’ve all had that where someone just attacks whatever you say, or they attack you, you’re a conspiracy theorist or whatever. What’s going on there is that you’ve challenged their view of the world. They feel quite defensive so they need to bring you down. 

[00:32:45] The third one is competitive. They don’t attack you, but they try to make their argument better than yours. 

[00:32:51] And then the fourth dynamic, which is the only one that can ever work, is co-operative. So if you’re in a conversation, if you don’t get into a cooperative dynamic with the person you’re talking to, you can kiss goodbye to them listening to anything you say, okay? Been my experience. 

[00:33:06] Now, how do we get cooperative? We connect. Once you’re connected with someone you’re automatically in a cooperative, pretty much most of the time. And my sense of the getting into a cooperative thing is really key. I will literally say to people, look we’re on the same side here. Yeah. You know, because what you have is that most people assume if you’re questioning the narrative, the caricature they have in their mind is that your– you don’t care about people, you want to kid everyone, you know, these silly things that the media paints into them. Once you re orientate them that that’s not the case, you’re here because you care for people’s health, et cetera, that will dismiss a lot of those dynamics.

[00:33:46] Does that make sense? So the real key thing is to get in– and, and the simplest way I’ve found to do this is to find common ground. 

[00:33:55] Kim Knight: Can you repeat the first one? I didn’t catch it. 

[00:33:58] David Charalambous: Yeah. It’s actually called supplicative. What it really is it’s just it’s what you’ll see is that there’s a power that’s not, you don’t have the power, the other person has all of the power. Okay. And that’s what a lot of governments are doing to the people. They want all the power so the, the, the people just need to follow. Don’t question, do as you’re told, et cetera. Now, the usual dynamic that you see, is that when people see you in an opposition they see the authorities and them as the good guys and you as the bad guys.

[00:34:28] Right? So that whole thing, you have to reverse that. I mean, it’s really quite simple to do once you get used to it, it’s really just connecting with– you don’t even need to mention it. Like John, the doctor, that’s what he did. Yeah. He didn’t actually consciously do anything. He just listened, listened, and then the woman connected, oh, he’s on my side. That makes sense? 

[00:34:48] That’s really the key thing in that. So dynamics are very key. So the simplest way of thinking about it is just focus on getting some common ground. What do you agree on? Once you find things to agree on, then you will be sort of– cause what happens in the brain– because what they’ve done is the divide and conquer has three steps to it. And it’s, you know, it’s been used for thousands of years. 

[00:35:11] The first step is classification. So you have to give groups identities, whether it’s, you know, Brexit or remain, or pro-vax / anti-vax, conservative, politician, you know, Democrat. It doesn’t matter. You classify the group. 

[00:35:28] The second stage is, do identify. Yeah. So you then identify with that group. The third stage is comparison. So each group will compare it to the other. And obviously whichever group you’re in, it’s going to be the better group. Isn’t it? Because you would have joined the other group if it wasn’t, unless of course you’re supporting football teams where sometimes you’re not in the best group. 

[00:35:47] So what the propaganda will do, then it will paint one of those groups as been amoral. That make sense? And then what happens is, is that you won’t really be able to get through to that person until you break that charictachure. Does that make sense? You need to find ways to connect because if you don’t, I’ll give you an example, how many here, you’ll say four facts to someone, three of them absolutely irrefutable, hundred percent solid. Fourth one, little bit of wiggle room.

[00:36:17] Where do they focus their attention? Exactly on that fourth fact. Yeah. That’s a signal to you that they’re in opposition to you. They don’t want, they literally love when someone says to you, well, where’s your studies on that? And they don’t want the studies on that. They just want you to shut up. I mean, it says they don’t want you to have to studies.

[00:36:37] So it’s really important that when you’re in these dynamics, and we’ve all been in relationships like this or friends or whatever way, whatever you say, they say the opposite. This is known as the polarity of beliefs. Make sense? And it’s very key because they’ve run a number of studies that if you got two groups of people and they were defined as opposing viewpoints, what they did was they presented the opposing group with all the stats for the other group.

[00:37:06] And they expected that both groups have moved closer to the middle. Do you know what happened? They actually went even further the other way. Think about this. If someone is an opposing view, if you present to them, your data, you actually get them to move even stronger into what they currently believe. It’s crazy, isn’t it?

[00:37:28] But has that been our experience? That they hang on to what they believe even more when it’s challenged? 

[00:37:35] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: Totally. And actually, when you bring information forward, it makes them more angry and more emotional.

[00:37:42] Kim Knight: Asking questions is key rather than the telling of the facts, it’s the asking the questions. And the listening. 

[00:37:50] David Charalambous: Exactly. Now when we get to the how and what we share, there’s actually three main things that we say in order to share information. And one thing I don’t advise is giving people more facts.

[00:38:03] This has, you know, for all the studies that has almost no chance of working because what it will do, it will trigger a cognitive dissonance. So effectively imagine that someone has in their mind a picture of what they understand of on that subject. What you present is an opposing picture. And what’s the brain going to do?

[00:38:24] The brain is always looking for the cognitive ease. It’s always going to look at the easy way. So it’s going to reject that new fact. The only time you want to instigate cognitive dissonance is when you show people that they have two thoughts in their own head, that don’t correlate. That’s really the only time you want to get cognitive dissonance, but we can go into other time.

[00:38:43] But given what you touched on there might be a good time to share one of the, sort of more important tips around how and what we share, is that it’s not really good to get people more facts because for a number of reasons, if the person agrees with you, then its really not a problem. Okay? You, you, you effectively find yourself in echo chambers and the echo chambers can share facts a lot of the time and it’s okay.

[00:39:12] If the person doesn’t understand the subject or they oppose it, then the optimal way of sharing information is via stories or metaphor. Now, Jerome showed this in the sixties. He was quite a wonderful cognitive psychologist and he showed via his studies that if you wrap the fact in a story, it would land 22 times more effectively than if it was just a raw fact.

[00:39:37] And I had tested this so many times. I’ve even had this in the same conversation. So I presented this concept, must be a year ago, and I walked out of my flat and I bumped into an old friend of mine and he said, oh, where are you going? Let’s go for a walk. And then he told me he was on a diet and he was doing calories in calories out.

[00:39:57] And then I explained to him, well, there’s a lot of data suggesting that’s not the ideal way. And then he sort of got quite resistant. And I’m sort of thinking that’s so funny, I just presented, don’t do this and I walked out, my house had done just that. And then we talked for another five, 10 minutes, and then I explained to him about, you know, a book I’d read and the studies and told him through the stories, same fact.

[00:40:20] And he went, oh, that’s amazing. Can you send me that article? All right. This is incredible. Like this, the same thing, but when it was wrapped in a story, no resistance, very open to it. When I told him the raw fact, it just like it hit. Does that make sense? Now think about this. How do most people get their information?

[00:40:39] Do most people read medical studies? Most people get them information from [inaudible]. 

[00:40:48] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: Yeah. TV. Mainstream news. Media.

[00:40:53] David Charalambous: Okay. So in terms of the context we’ve, we’ve covered that I think enough. The state, the emotions, is really, really key, not to get drawn in emotionally. Obviously that’s one of the most challenging things. So I’m just going to go down this list and, okay. So one of the reasons that people respond very, you know, get into a very angry, emotional state is when their ego is challenged.

[00:41:19] We have a image of the ego and a lot of the time, and it’s really, from what I can tell where the research is that our brain cannot tell the difference between being physically threatened and a threat to our ego. It tends to respond in a similar way. Anyone want to know these three words, the quickest way to make someone angry? Okay.

[00:41:39] To say you are wrong. Okay? Whenever we point something out, we never really want to use the word you, because that’s their identity. We’re literally saying you as a person in mind, that’s not true. We will say oh but that fact doesn’t seem correct to me, or I’m not sure that fact is correct. It is completely different from saying you are wrong.

[00:42:00] It’s so key. I, when I’m talking to someone that has a different opinion, I will very hardly ever use the word you. I will use the word we and us a lot. Because that’s what my perception is, that we are literally the public on the same side and we want to understand this together. So that’s one really important tip is really, if you want to get someone agitated, just tell them they won’t.

[00:42:21] Okay. I watched so many scientists say this to other scientists and it never ends well, even if the other person’s very friendly and open, it tends to always trigger. We talk about this concept, don’t trigger the gorilla. Okay. The gorilla is when we get into that emotional state, you know, and we’ve probably all seen it when you say to someone something, and then they just respond very angrily.

[00:42:43] So that’s another key important thing. One of the other reasons that people get very agitated is we don’t like our beliefs being challenged. We really don’t like things that we believe not being true. Okay. If you tell people this consciously, it does not work, in my experience. But if you tell someone a story where relayed it in that story may be the fact that they need to update that, , you know, how they see reality, they will do that automatically. And they will come to a different viewpoint. It’s been my experience now that if you can get enough exposure to people seeing stories of the information, they can’t unsee– so there’s a very famous study where it’s called the selective attention test. 

[00:43:27] And they have a gorilla walking in the background. And because people are distracted, they don’t see the gorilla. When you see the gorilla, you can’t unsee the gorilla. Yeah. That’s the key. So really, share information through stories and metaphor and asking very questions, very artistically that people will open up if all the conditions are right. But so often the conditions are not right.

[00:43:52] Yeah. So if we go into a conversation and they think we’re anti- in there pro-, there is almost a zero chance that anyone’s going to listen to each other until that gets reversed.

[00:44:01] So are there any questions on those views?

[00:44:05] Okay. So maybe if I pull one more and then we go to questions because I’ve got pretty much 22 on my screen, and it’s very important not to overwhelm ourselves. Because in fact, there’s a very famous story within Zen that will really show you that there’s only so much we can absorb at any one time.

[00:44:25] And think about when we’re talking to people, if we share too much information, what happens is they close down. Once they closed down, literally everything’s closed. 

[00:44:34] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: David after you do, the next point is maybe we can go into a role model and maybe you know, you and Anne or two of us can do role modeling together.

[00:44:47] And, and like you said help to to bring forward more understanding of the points you’ve talked about so far. How’s that? 

[00:44:55] David Charalambous: Yep. That’s, that’s fine by me. So the next one is really around how much space does someone have to absorb? So the powerful Zen story is that a professor, an academic goes to see the Zen master. And he says, I want to learn about Zen. The Zen master says, okay, I’ll make you a cup of tea and we can sit down and chat. He pours a kettle and the professor is standing there with a cup and he pours the water in and he just keeps pouring, he just keeps pouring. And then all the water starts flowing over the top. And the academic says, excuse me, can’t you see its full? And he says, yes. And just like your mind, until you empty some of your concepts, I can’t talk to you about zip. 

[00:45:37] Okay. So really the, the concept of the story is that so many people think they’re full up and we need to almost either allow some space or know that when we’ve filled the space and I can give you an example of a story that I encountered when I was talking to a friend over at the park. And my practice for the day then was to really see and observe how the other person was listening to me.

[00:46:00] And what I realized very quickly is that he wasn’t listening at all. When you literally look up what’s going on, and this is one of the benefits of a lot of the exercises we do is that when we’re so focused on what we need to say and why it’s not working, we don’t have much space for noticing anything else.

[00:46:18] And that’s why a lot of these exercises that we practice is that it’s a bit like driving, you know, when you get in a car and there’s like a hundred things to do, but now you don’t even think about them do you? You just do them automatically. But initially you’ve got to think about them one at a time very consciously.

[00:46:36] So I think let’s open up with some questions, Jennifer, and then we can maybe have some, you know, some play about with some conversations. 

[00:46:47] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: Emma, do you have some questions that you can see that’s going on in the chat? Anybody have any interesting comments that kinda can turn into a question?

[00:46:54] Emma Sron: Yes. Would you have a concrete example of a fact wrapped in a story with regards to the COVID narrative?

[00:47:01] David Charalambous: Yes. I do have a couple and they’re not lacking controversy. So I, I remember talking to people about ivermectin. So I’d say, you know, ivermectin is great, it’s got this amount of percentage, blah, blah, blah. Like zero response. Yeah. People just know that’s a horse dewormer, et cetera. And then I read a study and a news article, and then I said, you know, I bumped into Scott at the park.

[00:47:27] I said, you know, we got talking about various treatments. And I said, you know, I was reading a news article the other day. There was this gentleman, John Swanson, he’s 82, he’s on a ventilator. He’s got two days to live. The fact, they told the family, you know, John’s dead in two days. The family go, well, we’ve got nothing to lose let’s give him ivermectin. The hospital refused and the family, like you’ve told us he’s got three days, what do we got to lose? 

[00:47:54] So the, so the family takes the hospital to court. They get an injunction, they fly in and I think it was actually Pierre Kory. I’m not sure, but they fly in a doctor. They administer ivermectin to John. He’s at home like a week later.

[00:48:08] Okay. Off his death bed. And then this triggered a number of other court cases. And at the end of that story, this gentleman says to me, he says, oh, where can I get this? You see the difference? Because when you talk to the conscious mind, it’s literally resist resist. But when you tell someone a story, think about that story.

[00:48:26] You’ve got doctors, you’ve got court cases. John takes it he’s then at home. The unconscious mind is processing all of this and it’s making sense of it. And that’s a true story. So I never advised to never lie because you know, one, you shouldn’t, but two, it will always come back to bite you. So is that a good example?

[00:48:43] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: That was excellent. You have another question regarding face masks and how do you tell people that are wearing a face mask and regarding that they’re actually not working and rather again, because you’re, you’re triggered to really want to say the facts because we know a lot of facts about this. So how would you approach that? Cause this is something everybody’s dealing with every day.

[00:49:06] David Charalambous: Now, facemask is probably the most complex thing and it wouldn’t be the best place to start. So one of the things that we tend to do, the human brain tends to work. And I talk about this a lot because once we become aware of what our brain does, it makes a lot of sense and it answers a lot of questions.

[00:49:25] One of the most common biases that I see is the single cause fallacy. So we think that, you know, our behavior behavior is caused by one thing. Masking wearing is very complex. You’ll get a number of p– and you can genuinely, you know, I tend to joke about this, you can genuinely tell a lot of information by the way people are wearing them.

[00:49:44] If someone, you get anywhere near someone and they sort of jump back at you, that person is scared and they’re wearing the face mask because they’re scared. If the person is looking at you and giving you dirty looks, that’s usually the [inaudible]. You’re not doing, as you’re told. If someone’s got it down a little bit and whatever they won’t look for in the eye, that’s look, I know this doesn’t work, but I’m wearing it and I’m embarrassed, but I’m going to wear it. You know, there’s so many different reasons. You don’t know what that reason is.

[00:50:12] And then that’s why I think that I generally don’t really talk to people about face masks, because I think the face mask will be people that take it off once they’ve absorbed the knowledge. So I think given the– because a lot of the time they’re not wearing it, you know, It just doesn’t– it’s– when I look all the conversations on face marks, it’s the least successful thing.

[00:50:33] You know, I, I challenge on Twitter constantly professors to debate me about face masks and they won’t, okay. The ones that are pro- they literally won’t even enter a conversation. So it’s such an emotional thing that I, I would say that, it would be my advice is not start there. I know it’s the one that we want to because it’s so symbolic, the data seems to be so clear.

[00:51:00] But I just can’t think of many instances where we’ve had much success around that conversation. You know, I know what you could say, know we’ve con– you know, I worked with a lot of the scientific and academic groups and we produce a lot of flyers. So there’s a number of us that understand this, and we’ve pumped out hundreds of flyers on this, and I’m sure that some of them have worked, and we’ve done things about the size of the virus and the size of the holes in the mask and all these things.

[00:51:27] And I think if people want to, you know, they will get that and they will shift. I’ve certainly had people come up to me a few months later who have been, you know, complete mask wearers and then come up to me and said, oh my God, you were right. And they never wore a mask again. So I think it’s, it’s really not the best, I mean, I, I just don’t think it’s a very easy conversation then. I think concentrating on the other stuff is will, will get people to take them off, but directly doesn’t seem to work. 

[00:52:01] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: So what do you suggest we do is model for two of you to have an interaction? Cause I was hoping it would be face masks, but that could get a little complicated.

[00:52:11] It’s actually, it’s actually an uncomfortable, difficult situation. We’ve done that role modeling before in an elevator, two people get in and start talking and one takes one side, one takes the other, but what would you recommend then that you’d like to do that would actually, and you’re right, it’s a very complex conversation there.

[00:52:29] So where would you like to start to help people kind of step into this arena of getting off on the right foot? 

[00:52:37] Kim Knight: Can I just say something about the smart conversation? Oh, a few months ago I was out walking and there was a couple with a young child walking along. And they were, they were all masked or well the, the parents were masked up. And, and I just said to them, Hey, do you know the effects that are– I’m not saying by the way that this is the right approach, this is just what I happen to do in this situation instance.

[00:53:03] I said, Hey, do you happen to know what, what happens when you wear a face mask, the effects on your body? And he said, no. And he was sort of interested in, and then I just said a few things in about biologically what happens in the body. He went, oh, I didn’t know that. And he took his mask off. So you know, education is helpful sometimes.

[00:53:24] David Charalambous: It’s very key that the state of mind that you’re in when you do that, cause I do know a number of doctors that literally had huge success in talking to people about this. But think about the context. If you say to someone I’m Dr. So-and-so, let me talk to you about face masks. I mean, that context is completely different to not being a doctor.

[00:53:43] So if you are a doctor you really can have a lot of success with that. The only reason that I don’t– for me face, the mask wearing is really the tail where, you know, the tail of a dog really being wagged. It’s, it’s really one of the, it’s seems really important, but it’s really just you know, not one of those key core concepts for me.

[00:54:04] I really think that people and understanding, you know, how narratives are happening, what who’s controlling, the media, all these kinds of things seem to be more important. But yeah, I think–

[00:54:13] Emma Sron: You had mentioned earlier about getting people to kind of ask a question for themselves a bit, and I find, I think you’re right with the masks and a lot of the topics that you really have to kind of re read the room of who you’re talking to and, and go from there that it’s not necessarily the best thing to really open with or to start with.

[00:54:32] But I’ve had some success just getting people to start questioning why it’s okay to walk into a restaurant with a mask on and then take it off. And then eat. And put it back on to leave. And then that, you know, it just gets people to a point where they begin to question them you’re oh, you’re right. That actually doesn’t make sense.

[00:54:50] How does that help? What does that do? And then from there you can potentially ask even more questions about who, who is making these rules and deciding to enforce them. And it can, it can lead to more questions, but most people that I’ve found that I’ve talked to, if you can get them to ask that question there, there’s no good answer for it, but they can’t answer why, why that makes any sense.

[00:55:11] So that’s kind of one, one place to me where the door is a little bit open, where you can, you can talk to them through, through that. 

[00:55:20] David Charalambous: That’s really key. One important point to make about– I can just imagine, Emma, that when you’re talking to this person, you’re not being sarcastic, you’re not being abusive in any way. It’s just a very friendly conversation. That’s really key. We really– people, when people get into conflict, there reaches a point, but the most important thing to them is to save face. You know, I, I work with some of the people that work in conflict resolution and they’ve had so much experiences over the years and they say that the most problematic things that happens is that one or two things, the conversation doesn’t go well, either something that wasn’t said or something that was said badly, okay.

[00:56:03] That’s really the source of so many problems. And when that happens is what tends to happen is that people then go off into their groups and have conversations about that conversation. So can you believe what so-and-so said, et cetera. And what happens is that they’ve become such a conflict that people want to save face.

[00:56:20] So it’s really important allowing people to save face. Never, you know, I told you so is the worst thing we can say to them. I know this is, it’s kind of unfair, really in some respects, If we want people to open up, we want people to listen. We want people to absorb what we think to be the truth. You know, there’s, we’ve got to forsake those kinds of, you know, the people that around putting these stickers up, really think about this.

[00:56:46] Would you listen to someone if they called you names and asked you to do something? Okay. So when we very aggressively make these memes and whatever, the audience that we want to listen, we’re actually targeting with some abuse and that pretty much isolates it doesn’t it. So when it comes to messaging, you know, the word sheep and, you know, brainwash and all these things is the quickest way to get someone not to listen, you know, from our, you know, from each person’s perspective, it’s not that you’re right or wrong, it’s just that it won’t work to get through to the other person. 

[00:57:22] So I’m open to whatever conversation we can role play. And suggestions? We could do the–

[00:57:28] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: What about, how complex would this be? Because there’s another question that came up and it’s definitely very key is the mainstream media and the message that they’re putting there and helping people to see through that. That’s, that’s a little complex, but it’s still it’s, it’s there. And actually that’s a starting point because the mainstream media really has captured the whole audience that’s going along with everything that they’re being told by the by the authorities, right? 

[00:57:59] David Charalambous: Yes. What I tend to do is I tend to tell people stories about media. So there’s a really good book called Slanted and it’s by a Sheryl Atkinson, I think. And she was a award-winning journalist for 20 years at CBS.

[00:58:15] And she conveys many stories that are very important. One such story was. There was a couple of employees at Boeing that approached her and said, look, Boeing are not following the safety protocols. You know, there’s going to be a disaster. So Sheryl does this big investigation. She has a, you know, a hit piece that’s going to come out on the Monday. On the Sunday, Boeing leans against CBS, threatens to pull advertising revenue. They pull the story. Okay. And the next year two planes dropped, to do with the safety profile there. Now, now when you start to tell people that story, if I tell people consciously these things, it doesn’t really sell.

[00:58:55] But when you tell the story, the brain staff can make sense of this. And then if you’ve got enough stories, the brain will go, these guys can’t be trusted. The challenge is really getting enough of a conversation going that you can get these, but that’s why once you’ve got the connection, you can share these and just be very conscious about when the person’s full up, et cetera.

[00:59:14] But it’s really– the way I approach it now is that I don’t really target things. I just be myself and, you know, an opportunities come up all the time, even when you’re out at the supermarket, whatever. Topic comes out and you can share a piece of information. You know, I was in walking in the woods, the other day.

[00:59:31] And I went to get a water at the stand and we got into a conversation about things and I was able to just drop a few stories and the people were like, wow, really? Yeah, yeah. You know, this happened. And that happened. And I think if enough people do that– there’s another key thing as well is when there’s there’s this social proof aspect is absolutely key in all of this, is that people generally do what other people do. You know.

[00:59:57] There’s a lot of people that really they look around and it’s kind of hardwired interests, if we go back thousands of years. Yeah. I mean, you think after the dock pond, when you for a piece of bread and then one duck runs towards it, the others go right, something’s going on here, I need to join. And that’s really, what’s hardwired into us.

[01:00:14] And I use this in a very positive way. And I say, you know the start of it, I would say to people I’m on a few health groups and hardly anyone in these health groups very knowledgeable, we have lots of doctors, hardly any of them are doing X, Y, and Z. That should make us question, shouldn’t it? Very important because what the media and everything else wants to do is they want to isolate us as being like crazy individuals.

[01:00:39] Like when we’ve had the marches in London, literally we have one of them, we had, I think it was a million people. Then the BBC said a couple of thousand. Because they, if they acknowledged just how many people then everyone goes, wow, this is huge. So one of the things we really need to get through to people is that, you know, there is a huge number of people questioning this.

[01:01:01] I’m just wondering about this role play, because this feedback we get from the mic might be uh. 

[01:01:08] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: You know what you’re talking, what you’re talking about is wonderful. So we can just keep the dialogue going. And I think that we’re such a preliminary stage of helping to introduce how to step into someone else’s zone and, and help them out of there.

[01:01:24] Like we talked about, you know, cause we’ve got the media, we’ve got certainly the regulations, the mandates that were coming and going. I think all of us, you can talk with anybody about that. And they think that it’s like it’s offbeat and they don’t know what they’re doing. And that certainly is a good starting point for discussion because 100% of us are all in agreement on that.

[01:01:45] Kim Knight: Sorry, it is to have actually have like a repository of stories, you know, rather than the facts, a repository of facts. It’s like, okay, well I need the stories so that I can share the stories. 

[01:01:58] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: You are so right, we need a place. And David, like bringing these stories forward and yourselves, like you’re in part of an amazing group to like, and you’ve joined us here, which is fabulous.

[01:02:10] And maybe between all of us, we can bring stories and certainly situations and put them together somewhere that, that people have access to. 

[01:02:21] David Charalambous: Certainly. I mean, this is one thing, we’ve been restricted by the amount of resources we have access to. So we, I mean, I work with a large number of groups. I support them as much as I can bringing in this information to them, and they’ve been adjusting their messaging and et cetera, but that is actually one of the targets we have is to really, you know, a number of the organizations are starting to understand this and you’ll see, they’re starting to put stories out.

[01:02:45] They’re starting to make videos in a slightly different way. If I was to say, you touched on something, there is, two of the most important tips is that one is never really share a fact with someone if they believe the opposite, that’s going to trigger a cognitive dissonance literally every time. 

[01:03:02] The second thing I’d say, and we’ve done a video on this and it’s called the hotel of knowledge. And what we say is, imagine all the information that you’ve learned over the last two years. And for a lot of us, it will be much earlier. Imagine that was a hotel. So the ground floor was the really easy stuff. And then each floor gets more difficult and more advanced knowledge. We then get to the penthouse and we often shout at people on the penthouse and they haven’t walked into the lobby.

[01:03:30] And this discord is one of the biggest problems that I’ve seen in groups, which is why we developed this, this metaphor to say, look, if they haven’t come in the lobby, you have to start there. Yeah. So what you want to start with is the least controversial subject. Okay, get common ground, get sharing facts.

[01:03:51] And I have added where, you know, once I started to really start to get a lot of this sort of automated into my unconscious mind, I remember going to the same place and the difference in six months in really studying in depth that the first time that it was, you know, people calling me a conspiracy theorist and the second time nonstop questions.

[01:04:12] What about this? What about that? You know, so it was completely for them because the second time I wasn’t saying you need to descend, I just was sitting back and relaxing and they came to me. This is the dance that goes on. If you try to push information on to people, there’s a thing called reactance.

[01:04:28] What it is, it’s the natural resistance to being changed. If you try to change someone, they will be. Yeah. If you just naturally just be yourself and share what you know, and just be very confident about it and I know I’m making it sound easy and it’s not that you can really get there with a bit of practice that you’ll see fundamental shift.

[01:04:50] I had one lady on one of our calls last week said the one thing about that I said to a lot don’t step in the ring and listen, and just reconnect with that person. You said that changed everything for her, that you, all the conversations just started going well.

[01:05:04] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: That’s a, that’s a jewel of information to tell people and it’s something for all of us to practice. Thank you, David. 

[01:05:11] David Charalambous: So are there any other questions to answer? 

[01:05:14] Kim Knight: No, I just, what came to me was like another, another– cause you could almost have like different headings of the different topics that we might want to talk with people about.

[01:05:25] And another one, which obviously is a very highly charged one, is why the vaccines might be dangerous.

[01:05:32] David Charalambous: Actually brings into an important theory. One thing is to avoid black and white statements and move on to color. And what I mean by that is that when I do go on to face masks, I don’t say they work or they don’t work. I ask people how effective are they? Okay. Because then they have to start thinking along this spectrum.

[01:05:53] And when I say to them, because once you can get into that conversation, you can say, well, actually they’re not really effective are they? But you say, if they take their mask off, then they’d just turn their mask off and they might not change anything else. Most people around my town and everywhere else don’t wear them anymore.

[01:06:09] Okay. And the people that are wearing them are probably the hardest people to reach because it might up the other end. And really the thing to do is it’s really whatever that main group of people in the middle, what they do, it’s going to signify what really happens going forward. The, you made another point there Kim which I was going to touch on, which was– 

[01:06:30] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: –the vaccines. 

[01:06:32] David Charalambous: Ah yes. So then what you, what you want to do, and one of the, would anyone like the tip on– there’s, there’s one really simple tip on how to keep 90% of trolls quiet. Okay. You, you put a post up, someone comes up and they go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What do we normally do?

[01:06:51] We normally take the opposite position to say no, it’s not. Yeah. So someone says two plus two equals five. No, it’s not. It’s four. We go back and forth. What you need to do is ask them to explain themselves. Okay. And you know what? Most people can’t, because most people don’t know what they just said.

[01:07:08] Most people that are– so what’s gone on is that the way that we’ve learned information– I know it sounds quite harsh, but historically, we built our map of the world through experience. So we would go out to the world, we’d move around, you know, caveman, get chased by the tiger. We evolved. And we said, right, this is kind of silly, you know, everyone learning about the tiger.

[01:07:29] So we told stories, we would tell stories to the next generation. So they didn’t have to go through all the, you know, the hard stuff. What’s happened now is that with the media and everything else, people would have been told stories, but they have no experience and they have no substance of why that is true.

[01:07:46] So what happens is that people say things. So I I’ve, you know, I’ve got so many examples of this where people say, blah, blah, blah. And I’ll just say to them, what do you mean by this, in a friendly way. I say, yeah, what do you mean by this? And it will go quiet. It literally will go quiet because they actually don’t know.

[01:08:03] So someone will say, you know, it’s safe and effective. And then I say, how much percentage is it safe and effective? And of course, if they come back with 95%, I say, is that AOR or ROR, you see? So by just getting that, so then you get into this. So then you can really start sharing information because you’ll getting them– the visual I can say to you is that a lot of time having conversations, you’ve got two people standing on a soapbox. And what happens is we project our belief systems out into the conversation. So much of people’s soap box has been opened and interfered with without their consent or knowledge.

[01:08:39] That’s, what’s happened for a lot of the propaganda. All you need to do is ask them the question what’s in there and what happens is they go or, oh, that’s really uncomfortable. I’ll give you a concrete example. We was on a March in one of my local towns and three, I think there were uni students, started shouting abuse at people.

[01:08:59] And then this lady went to confront them and I joined her to give her some back up and they go, I screened them, he goes, you’re spreading misinformation. I say, well, well, that’s always possible, which misinformation am I spreading? And then he goes quiet and then he says it again. And now his throat is cracking in a little bit.

[01:09:15] Cause he’s really unsure. he said, you’re spreading misinformation. I said, yes, I heard you, but you have to tell me which misinformation. And then it just goes quiet because he doesn’t know. He’s just saying what the media told him to say. And I said to him, can you know why we’re here? And I explain it to you.

[01:09:32] We can have a conversation about it. I’m on your side, I’m here. But you see how the space of a minute he’s gone from screaming at me to now listening. I’ve had, this example happens so many times people would come up. So I was on hold the line, you know, holding peoples– there’s 200 of us holding hands.

[01:09:48] This lady comes up in a mask on her own and screams at us that we’re anti-social. Think about that. That’s like, she’s on her own. We’re 200 of us holding hands. But we’re anti-social. People really, you know, it’s because that’s what they told. And then you could ask her, well, in what way?

[01:10:06] I think that’s probably quite a nice place to the finish on. And you see that there is 

[01:10:11] Autonomous Vision: I was just wondering about the WHO global pandemic treaty, and I’m coming from the ground. I’m an activist. And we are kind of going to try to be before the rules are implemented, instead of fighting against what’s already happened after restrictions and such. So if you have a suggestion, how we can get the ground people to understand that we want to stop the treaty.

[01:10:39] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: I’d like to suggest that you go to the World Council for Health website, we have a lot of information there and a lot of guidance on the website. And also, let me, regarding the inter-governmental negotiating body, where they had actually people could make submissions to actually speak directly to the world council of health. And oops, hang on. Sorry. I think turned on here. Sorry guys. Turn that off. I just went to the website for you. They, that session is completed, I believe today. They had oral submissions where you could submit either a video, a written submission where they actually also consider taking you onto a panel to let you talk.

[01:11:21] And that if you go, we actually will post it in here. The inter-governmental negotiating body talks that were done and you can go and have a look at them. And there is actually going to be a second session in June. And that will be June 16th and 17th. So if you keep watching in the World Council for Health website, we will be posting updates and information about that.

[01:11:46] We actually only got word about this last Thursday, a an investigator that’s was looking into this, contacted us on Thursday, James Roguski. He has a Substack, James Roguski Substack. You could probably just put them into your search and find it and his Substack is fantastic. And he does constant updates on this also, but we will actually provide you guidance on the World Council for Health.

[01:12:10] And as we come up to the second round, June 16th and 17th. So you do still have an opportunity I believe that at the same time, please spread it around your groups and disseminate this information so that people can become aware of this because really none of us really knew a lot about this till very recently about all of this, these treaty and everything that was going on around the treaty until quite recently.

[01:12:36] Autonomous Vision: Thank you very much. 

[01:12:38] David Charalambous: Pretty good points and what we can, what we can add from, you know, how to talk to people about this is that if anyone goes to the website, reachingpeople.net and subscribes I can send you a template, which we just finished in a course on the powerful messaging. So around this, the key thing about this is that people will be driven about what they’re going to loose.

[01:12:59] What are they going to gain is, is really not really what they’re driven by. So you really need to point out what this treaty is going to take away from them. That will really be one of the big motivators. People will be driven by emotion, not by logic. This sounds crazy, but this is why you look all the government message and all the authority messaging, they trigger emotion.

[01:13:17] They don’t really care. You know, most of it’s not really opinions and logic. So you’ve got to get to what’s emotional to people. What’s important to them, what they’re going to lose and why it’s important to them. But we’ve got a template which effectively has got five questions, really straight into three sub questions in each one, which would allow you to tailor the message to reach your audience.

[01:13:41] What’s also key when you’re producing flyers and stuff is don’t load it with facts. You see this constantly have a single important message, keeps the space, tell a story, make it emotional, but don’t, just don’t give them 20 facts because it just shuts down their mind. Does that help? 

[01:14:02] Autonomous Vision: Yes. I love it. Thank you.

[01:14:04] David Charalambous: You’re welcome.

[01:14:04] Emma Sron: Anne asks what info is best for stickers without wanting to be too preachy. Oh, you’re muted, David. 

[01:14:13] David Charalambous: Yeah with stickers, I think one of the best things is to, you know, there’s lots of messages you can do. I think getting people to ask questions and asking questions, what’s really key is not to isolate your audience. So don’t be derogatory to the people we’re trying to reach in anyway, because that really just shuts them down.

[01:14:31] I think the same thing applies. Emotion. What’s important to them. You know, the social proof, the thing in this template would be really good. There’s actually a book. If anyone’s really interested, it’s called The Choice Factory. The book is really key. It’s not the top 25 nudges in effect. Now the course that we run on powerful messaging is, is how to do it ethically.

[01:14:53] Obviously that’s not how a lot of corporations use them. Yeah, so I think that’s probably the easiest way that the templates really good in that respect, you can really learn for that how to conduct a message, but I think keep it very simple, you know, appeal to an emotion, appeal to what’s important to someone.

[01:15:11] And a lot of time you’ve got to sh– you know, a lot of people are driven by what they’re going to lose rather than what they’re going to gain. Oh, and actually, what, one thing, a lot of that behavioral sciences– you know, anyone that’s really very conscious of freedom and these things will be very motivated by that.

[01:15:29] We need to understand that a lot of people are not. A lot of people are motivated, funny enough, if the order is they want to be liked and they want to be right, then they want to be free. Okay. This is why the group identity is so key. Why they pushed it. We’re in this together. Why people don’t want it by people in a say I’m following the science.

[01:15:54] So when someone says that to me, I’m following the science. I already say, what science are you following? And then they realize they actually don’t know. It’s again, it’s the words are not their own, does that makes sense. But you’ve got to be, when you ask the question, you’ve got to be very supportive. 

[01:16:10] I think the key aspect that I hope to come across is that if people don’t think you’re on their side, then they’re not going to listen to you. That’s why we’re so tribal. You know, we don’t listen to it, fives in opposition to us. I wouldn’t advise pretending to be on someone’s side. Find a way to be on someone’s side, you know, find that connection point where if it’s, whatever it is, we’re all humanity.

[01:16:31] We’re all being, you know, pushed by certain interests, you know, find that connection. 

[01:16:39] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: Well, there’s something that brings you together to talk to people anyway, even to engage for any reason. Hopefully it’s not for directly combative reason. And when you’re come together. Yes, you’re so right. You’re common ground, your friendship ground.

[01:16:53] And it’s– we have so much to learn on this topic and you’ve just sort of cracking the nut right now, David, and I really appreciate everything you’re saying. You’ve got so much resourceful information and for everybody, please, we will make sure that we post– David’s going to post his link in the chat that he was referring to.

[01:17:13] I will post the link to see the, the hearings that happened over the last three days at the World Council for Health, sorry, no, that, that was at the WHO, but the other World Council Health, I will post it. And do, do we have any other questions coming forward? No?

[01:17:31] Emma Sron: –chat, but I wonder if when we finish up here, if anybody, anybody on the call, on the panel wants to check in the chat and discuss things further, that might be nice. 

[01:17:41] David Charalambous: Quite welcome to email me info@reachingpeople.net for questions. I, I tend to answer those as well. We have a Thursday zoom call as well every week, which I think we’re going to do another one of these anyways, Jennifer, aren’t we?

[01:17:56] So people cutting posts or email topics that you’d like to hear about. 

[01:18:03] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: Yes, please. Please put in the chat areas of conversation that you would like us to come forward and discuss, and we’ll bring people forward that are, that are experts in those areas. And also open it up so we can all share how we’re feeling, because I feel that we’ve just, we’re just getting into this area of how to approach conversations.

[01:18:26] I’d like to suggest that David, you might come back next week and we can continue this dialogue and take it one step further and go deeper into this and help people to be able to deal with some of these issues we’ve talked about, even the ones that we’ve said that we have difficulty talking about.

[01:18:45] I mean, we do need to know how to engage people that have masks on because we’re, you know, people get challenged on both sides or even ask questions about it. How do you gently talk about this topic even for people who are curious to help to empower them too. So these are all interesting ideas. And so this has been really amazing. And thank you, Kim and Anne and David, and most notably for conducting this with me today. This has been really good. And thank you so much, everybody for joining us. And we really look forward to continuing this conversation next week. 

[01:19:22] Emma Sron: David, do you think it will be ok, I wonder if we’re going to further talk about this next week, if, if people in the chat wanted to give any more examples of anything that they’d like to dive deeper into specifically, or email you since you shared your email address, so that maybe, maybe over the next day or so, if we got a little bit of feedback about the specifics that people are interested in learning more about then over the next week we could prepare for that and then discuss that on Wednesday so that we’re like directly giving information, but to all of you that are listening right now.

[01:19:52] David Charalambous: Yeah. That’s certainly a good place to start with Q&A, if we have a long list of questions and yeah. We could address the yeah.

[01:20:00] Dr Jennifer Hibberd: Thanks so much everybody for joining us. Have a wonderful afternoon, morning, evening, and we will see you again next week. And we’ll see you through the week because we will have a general, general assembly meeting on Monday.

[01:20:12] So we look forward to you joining us there. Thanks so much.

[01:20:16] Bye everybody.